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Yet, Kwan is described as if entering paradise when he sacrifices his life to Kali’s ravenous
thirst for blood (YLD, 248). Ray Barton claims that Langford, after his journey through the
Land of Dis and into the hellish Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge which ends with his
crucifixion, has reached ‘home’ (HW, 451), signifying clearly a form of spiritual renewal
which, in the Eastern terms Koch is working with, includes not only himself but the entire
created cosmos.
9.5. Ilsa Kalnins’ Micro-Cosmic Dance
Ilsa Kalnins professes undying love for Robert O’Brien in Across the Sea Wall, but he
expects only something more docile like that given by Polly to Richard Mahoney. Instead, he
finds a mutative double-woman, both creative and destructive, passionate and violent, male
and female. She can be Parvati, the Protectress and good wife, and this is what she offers him
at the novel’s end (ASW, 140), but as her name, Kalnins, indicates, she is often Kali. She is the
‘Maternal whore, loose in the universe, her destruction and creation all play’. When she makes
love to O’Brien, she is ‘impaled in triumphant intercourse’ (ASW, 114) sitting astride him, who
is but the ‘pale’ consort (Cowie, 86). Michael, Ilsa’s dance manager who brings him to the
mountains to recuperate, makes sure there can be no misunderstanding who Ilsa is: ‘She is a
woman who roams the world like a warrior. She is a creature whose sex is both powerful and
weak: she is both female and male’ (ASW, 129).
O’Brien observes Ilsa sleeping beside him; perceiving her according to the Orientalist
stereotypes which are natural to him. She is the very image of the exotic and unknown, and he
senses so many of the discrepancies in her and yet is not consciously aware just how deep the
waters are on the other side of the sea wall he has been preparing to cross:
He stared at her sleeping face, as he so often did, half expecting it to be
simplified into innocence. Smooth, unlined, youthfully puffed with sleep, it
looked more foreign in unconsciousness—more Russian. And it baffled him
by appearing childish, but not innocent; female, but not feminine. It was
essentially harsh, this smooth face; he could imagine it cynically and
phlegmatically contemplating violence and killing; and perhaps it had, since
she had gone through the war. She was so alien to him! The thrust of her lips,
the slant of her eyes, were almost brutal. But he loved her, as she slept; what
he felt now was perhaps simple enough to be given that name. (ASW, 88)
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